At one time the Mediterranean looked like
it might become a Muslim lake. Constantinople fell to the Turks
in 1453, and its name was changed to Istanbul; by 1522 Egypt, Syria,
and Rhodes were under Turkish domination--later, even Vienna was
threatened. Muslim supremacy in the southern Mediterranean led to
the rise of ports such as Oran, Bougie (Bejaďa), and Algiers.
Bone (Annaba) in Algeria, a populous town manufacturing earthenware,
consumed a lot of beef and exported wool, butter, and honey. Agricultural
produce from the nearby plains flowed into the great market of Algiers
and then on to Bougie. Boats from Oued el Harach, off Cape Matifou,
transported wool, wheat, and poultry to Marseilles, Valencia, and
Barcelona.

Only Melilla and Ceuta, Spanish territory
in North Africa and once important presidios, today remind us of
the economic and military threat to Spain from this activity in
North Africa. To counter the threat as well as to provide defense
against pirates (like ‘Uluj ‘Ali, the Bey of Algiers,
who
drove the Spanish out of Tunis in 1569), the Spanish king Ferdinand
V built a line of presidios along the North African coast between
1509 and 1511. To supplement the presidios, the Spanish also built
major defense works throughout southern Italy and by 1567 more than
three hundred watchtowers existed throughout the kingdom. The presidios
represent a great missed military opportunity for the Spanish because
they never moved inland to capture the whole of the Maghrib, the
area of western North Africa that includes Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia,
and sometimes Libya. The Turkish fleet was stymied and rarely crossed
the Naples-Sicily line, where Christian bases at Malta and La Goletta
in Tunisia, controlled by the Spanish until 1574, could threaten
them. The Spanish also had a base in Messina in Sicily, which held
a commanding position in a narrow channel. It had easy access to
Sicilian wheat for provisions and was near enough to Naples to receive
in short order men, sails, biscuits, hogsheads of wine, vinegar,
fine powder, iron cannon balls, oars, and match and rods for arquebuses,
the very heavy matchlock guns invented in the fifteenth century.

The presidios grew into little cities,
like islands, supported more from the sea than the surrounding lands.
Mers-al-Kebir, Ceuta, Melilla, and La Goletta were all presidios
that had windmills, powder magazines, cisterns, and cavaliers fixed
with powerful bronze artillery, the raison d'ętre of the presidios.
The Spanish supply ships plying the sealanes of the southern Mediterranean
brought the fresh water, fish, and chickpeas needed to feed the
presidios. Convoys left the principal port of Málaga to supply
the presidios, dodging the corsairs from Algiers or Tetouan who
would sometimes capture these ships, reselling their cargo. But
at the same time Spanish ships were dodging corsairs, other small
boats from Valencia and Andalusia called balancelle, carrying rice,
perfume, and even contraband to Algiers.

When the corsairs interdicted food shipments
to the presidios, famine followed. But when food did arrive at these
isolated presidios, dinner was often predictable. The diet of the
garrisons along the Barbary coast in January 1569 consisted of flour,
wine, salted meat, lard, chickpeas, tuna, and olive oil. Simple soups and stews were eaten by both the adventurers
who garrisoned these isolated presidios and the corsairs who attacked
them, and they always contained chickpeas. I don't imagine that
the corsairs ever had such delicious preparations as the chickpea
soup, but they may have.